GCC 4.8.1 is the first bug-fix release containing important fixes for regressions and serious bugs in GCC 4.8.0 with over 91 bugs fixed since the previous release. Support for C++11 ref-qualifiers has been added to GCC 4.8.1, making G++ the first C++ compiler to implement all the major language features of the C++11 standard.

With over 800 updates, including minor and major updates, the current milestone is ready for some serious testing. This iteration already sees some major upgrades taking place, with the kernel moving on to 2.6.39 and GNOME to 3.0. In addition we have popular GNOME applications like Evolution, Eye of GNOME and others all synchronized, and KDE’s Plasma Desktop coming along nicely with a minor version upgrade to 4.6.3. You will also find upgrades to GCC, glibc, Perl, Python, and the RPM package manager.

This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include:

Updated Desktop Environments. Fedora 15 will ship with GNOME 3, the next major version of the GNOME desktop. If you're interested in other experiences, KDE and Xfce will also be showcasing the latest and greatest in desktop technology from their respective projects.

System and session management. Previously available as a technology preview in F14, systemd makes its full-fledged debut in Fedora 15. systemd is a smarter, more efficient way of starting up and managing the background daemons relied on by services we all use every day - such as NetworkManager and PulseAudio.

Cloud. Looking to create appliances for use in the Cloud? BoxGrinder creates appliances (virtual machines) for various platforms (KVM, Xen, EC2) from simple plain text appliance definition files for various virtual platforms.

Updated programming languages and tools. Fedora 15 features new versions of Rails, OCaml, and Python. GDB and GCC have also been updated. (Fedora 15 was built with GCC 4.6.0, too!)

Productivity Applications.LibreOffice is filled with tools for everyday use, including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

Dynamic Firewall. Fedora 15 adds support for the optional firewall daemon, that provides a dynamic firewall management with a D-Bus interface.

Ecryptfs in Authconfig. Fedora 15 brings in improved support for eCryptfs, a stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux. Starting with Fedora 15, authconfig can be used to automatically mount a private encrypted part of the home directory when a user logs in.

DNSSEC for workstations. NetworkManager now uses the BIND nameserver as a DNSSEC resolver. All received DNS responses are proved to be correct. If particular domain is signed and failed to validate then resolver returns SERFVAIL instead of invalidated response, which means something is wrong.